“My takeaways from the survey are that Senator McConnell is in solid-shape among Republicans and general election voters, and that Ashley Judd, for someone who has never run for office, already has a tough hole out of which to climb regarding her own image,” Jennings said in a online statement.

Judd is considering a bid against McConnell, and is expected to announce her intentions soon. But the Hollywood actress and liberal activist has already been targeted by attack ads, mainly criticizing her for living in Tennessee.

It also finds Judd trailing McConnell among men by nearly 20 points and that the two are tied among women voters.

Harper Polling founder Brock McCleary, the outgoing polling director and deputy executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the aim of his project is to give the GOP access to flexible, cost-effective polling data that matches what Democrats are producing.

In a way, the project is an extension of a 2011 initiative at the NRCC to conduct in-house IVR polling. That effort was successful enough, according to McCleary, that he decided it would be worth doing on a larger scale.